


Another Sad Death Written In The Book Of Tyr

by Kastaka



Category: Nethack (game)
Genre: Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-14 23:34:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/520671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kastaka/pseuds/Kastaka





	Another Sad Death Written In The Book Of Tyr

**Author's Note:**

  * For [soundingsea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundingsea/gifts).



 

 

Jessamine strode boldly down the dank stone steps into the dungeon, accompanied only by her trusted kitten Ymr. At her side, her mother's sword; on her arm, the buckler that her father had purchased from some dwarves for her journey. An eating knife remained, but all of her light sources and ways of making fire had been ruined by an incident with a river earlier in her trek.

The cavern glimmered invitingly with a strange light. It was all too easy. Slay the kobold. Slay the gecko. Slay the bats. Search for doors. She eyed her solitary ration hungrily - it had been a long journey, and her provisions were almost exhausted - but ate the gecko and a strange kind of malevolent lichen instead. Ymr took on a coyote all by herself, and it was only right and proper that the kitten got to eat the spoils of that.

An armoured goblin provided her with a source of temptation, but she resolutely refused to don its armour lest it turn out to bear one of those vile curses she'd heard about. Her trusted shield would do her well for now, and she was sure she could sell the jade ring carelessly left on the floor (along with piles of gold - what was with that?) rather than have to risk its unknown gifts or dangers. After all, she'd heard guards marching and someone counting money already in the dungeon, although they remained elusive after quite some searching.

She realised that this might all be more complicated than she had thought when she almost ran through the hobbit. She had just opened the door, there was the short humanoid figure, she raised her sword...

"Pardon me?" the hobbit said, looking mildly offended.

"Oh," she replied, dropping her combative stance and looking rather dismayed. "Um. Sorry to bother you, mister hobbit."

"And right you are to be sorry too," he said. "You crazy adventurers, always charging around down here with weapons drawn, getting in the way of the daily business of our subterranean kind."

"Well," she said. "Um. Have you heard of the Amulet of Yendor?"

"Oh, you're on that damn fool quest, are you?" he replied. "Still right up here and with your kitten too, I see. You're probably not long for this world then, miss, I'm sorry to say. Most people I meet up here, charging around with hubris and the joy of youth, they don't make it very far. It's the ones who come back to make a home here that have a hope, lass. You'd be better off escaping the dungeon while you still can."

"There are others after the amulet?" she asked, aghast.

"Oh yes," said the hobbit, "a great number of them. I doubt you'll meet any, though. Solitary creatures. Never seen more than one in the same place. Less one of them's dead, of course."

She's about to ask another question, but there is an impatient look in his eyes, and he cuts her off.

"Look, I'm mighty glad you didn't run me through, but I do have my life to be getting about, you know?"

"Is there anything you can tell me?" she asked, desperately. "Anything that might help me in my quest?"

"Don't drink the fountains," he said, before pointedly turning aside.

She thought back to the fountain on the previous floor with a guilty, sinking feeling. The surface water tasted a bit contaminated, sure, but the second draught had been refreshing. Clear pleasant water had been just what she needed after the long trek, to wash the taste of corpses out of her mouth.

For a while after that meeting she continued to feel almost heroic, kicking down doors and amassing a pile of orcish daggers, but nearly fainting from hunger while fighting some kind of zombie makes her finally resort to her last ration of food, and the lichen and slimes didn't seem to be helping keep her fed. She choked down the remains of two hill orcs and realised that she'd pushed a boulder into a door, or maybe another boulder, and had no way to remove it. She felt like crying. Could this be the end of her triumphant descent, trapped by simple rock, never to reach her goal?

Trying the other fork downwards, she passed the hobbit again, who just looked at her pityingly. She fantasised about shaking him and asking where he got his food, or even treating herself to a nice roast leg of hobbit, but her lawful nature asserted itself and she just nodded politely. Waiting for her kitten to come to her side has her hopping from foot to foot impatiently, and when Ymr finally deigned to stroll over she hurried down the steps, not daring to meet the hobbit's sorrowful gaze.

It was dark down there. As she carefully picked her way along a wall, water landed on her head from a great height. Gnomes threw unpleasant concoctions at her from the shadows. She ate one of their bodies, trying not to think how humanoid it was. Ymr fetched her a necklace, and she bent down to pet the poor creature. "I wish I had something to feed you," she sighed, "but I don't. I don't have anything to feed myself, and I'm getting weighed down with all these weapons that might be useful and might just be junk."

She found one of the gnomes trapped in a pit, but it was blocking the only way forwards, so she couldn't simply leave it to its fate. Eating corpses had just become routine now. She killed a pony and ate it, wondering vaguely if she could have had a warhorse if only she'd had some carrots to hand. Not that carrots would have survived the journey, and it was laughable to think anyone would have anything so civilised down here. She had lost track of Ymr when she ran into a stray kitten, all hissing and sharp little teeth. For a moment she almost mistook the creature for her faithful companion, thinking that Ymr might have gone wild with the terrible clawing hunger that ever stalked them in this place, but once she had dispatched the creature she found Ymr again, looking rangy but fitter than ever.

There followed an epic battle with some rats and bats far beyond the usual size of such creatures, and when she had wiped the blood from her eyes and caught her breath, she saw that her kitten looked less like a kitten and more like a cat in her own right. Poor Ymr, growing up so fast.

A dwarf crossed her path soon thereafter, and she hailed it, hoping to find an ally in these dark places. After all, dwarves famously served Tyr, did they not?

"Hail, good dwarf!" she called. The dwarf turned to greet her, but to her mounting horror, Ymr bounded up to the gentleman and began to savage him most fiercely, claws flashing in the darkness.

"Ymr, no!" she yelled. "Bad girl! Come here!"

But Ymr paid no heed to her calling, save to yowl most obstreperously, and Jessamine was left with nothing to do but back away helplessly. She barely noticed that she had blundered into an arrow trap in her despair. Was Ymr driven mad by the hunger, or did her feline friend know something about this dwarf that made him an obvious foe rather than a potential ally? Which creature would prevail?

The second, at least, was answered soon enough. Ymr emerged from the darkness and with great satisfaction lay the cloak the dwarf had been wearing at Jessamine's feet. Numbly, Jessamine picked it up and headed back into the darkness to find the rest of the dwarf's remains. His body, alas, was torn beyond possible use, but his iron shoes were intact and - wonder of wonders - he had been carrying a pickaxe. Now she could fix the mistake she had made with the rocks, earlier in her adventures.

"You shouldn't have done that, Ymr," she scolded, but the cat had headed back off into the darkness in search of more prey.

 


End file.
